LRB Blog

In Berlin last month I went to the Museum der Dinge in Kreuzberg. The museum of things tells the history of the Werkbund, an early 20th-century movement to bring aesthetic values to mass production. The small space is filled with wooden cabinets displaying every household object imaginable: crockery, furniture, glasses, knick-knacks. It’s an absorbing exhibition that gives you a sense of acquisitive discovery, like rooting around in someone else’s cupboards. Halfway through there’s a cabinet partially obscured with text, asking the visitor: ‘How should the swastika symbol be handled within the exhibitions of a museum? Should it be displayed? Or not?’ The cabinet also carries the text of the German criminal code that forbids the distribution of Nazi propaganda, punishable by three years’ imprisonment or a fine.